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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010


LITERARY CALENDAR THURSDAY 7 P.M. Oliver Sacks, the author of the bestselling “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” discusses his new book, “The Mind’s Eye,” at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. Tickets are $8, or two free with purchase of the book at Politics and Prose; call 202-364-1919 or visit www.sixthandi.org.


Fate


awaits his mortal destiny


BY SARAH PEKKANEN N


ote to all the single ladies: If a guynamedDennis saunters up to you at a bar, bragging about


the black satin duvet cover on his bed, think carefully before you grab his Shirley Temple and toss it in his face. In S.G. Browne’s terrific comic novel “Fated,” Dennis is Death—one of the dozens of Immortals who walk among us. And he isn’t the only one you don’t want to annoy. God is nicknamed Jerry (he’s a bit


Men,moping ILLUSTRATION BY THE WASHINGTON POST/PHOTOS BY ISTOCKPHOTO BY RON CHARLES


I’mweary ofdreary. I know it’s an act of book reviewing


apostasy, but I’ve had it with the exqui- sitely crafted sighs of depressed men. And that’s not just the eggnog talking. Honestly,howmany times dowehave to praise the stark story of a wandering, alienatedman thatHemingway perfect- ed in “The Sun Also Rises” way back in 1926? Every year adds two or three “haunt-


ingmasterpieces” to this respected sub- genre. This year’s top entries included JoshuaFerris’sgrave“TheUnnamed,”Di- naw Mengestu’s somber “How to Read the Air” and now Damon Galgut’s “In a Strange Room,” which was a finalist for theManBookerPrize.The lyricsdiffer— a little—but themelody of these dirges doesn’t change: existential angst gliding along one spare, cool paragraph after another, like a Giacometti statue strut- ting out of the IowaWriters’Workshop. I’ve put inmy timewith these narrators, and I’ve praised their harrowing stories and stylistic elegance, but Galgut, a South African novelist and playwright, has finallywornme out. “In a Strange Room” is a collection of


three autobiographical travel tales that have won praise since they were first published in the Paris Review and now come to us bound together as a novel. In each of these stories, “he goes on some- whereelse.Andsomewhereelseagain. . . He feels no connection with anything around him, he’s constantly afraid of dying.” In the first story, “The Follower,” our


shell-shocked narrator is drifting through Greece when he bumps into Reiner, a strikingly handsome German dressedall inblack. “Hehas a sullensort of beauty,” Galgut tells us, “with long silky hair that falls around his shoul- ders.” They end up in the same hostel,


where they engage in Brief Conversa- tionsFraughtWithTension: “Howlong are youhere for. “I’malso going inthemorning. “Are yougoing toAthens. “No.The otherway.To Sparta. “So you’ve seenMycenae already. “I’ve beenhere twodays. “Ah.” Damon can’t shake the German or


engage himin any real intimacy or use a questionmark. “He isworn down by the constant presence, like some kind of dark attendant angel, ironic and brood- ing,his face almostpetulant.” The hunky German walks


aroundwithhis shirtoff, sitson the edge of Damon’s bed, dar- inghimtomake the firstmove. It’s a scene of homoerotic pas- sive aggression straight froma British prep school memoir of the 1930s. Except this is the 21st century,andthere’snoway to explain why these twomod- ern,unattachedadults imagine their relationship should be so burdened with the threat of transgression. They keep up this dance of denial for 70 pag- es, leadingeachotheronacruel walking challenge across Greece. “Was what happened between him and Reiner love orhate,” thenarratorasks, “orsomething else with another name.” But we dare speak its name nowadays, Mr. Galgut, and it’s not so shocking or titillating as yousuggest. Admittedly, it is highly atmospheric,


and the sense ofmenace can be exciting, as in Poe’s “TheMan of the Crowd,” but there’snoescapingtheartificialityof this performance.The story’s creepiness and ambiguity are a substitute for the emo- tional profundity it makes a claim to. Vacillating erratically between first and third person, the tale is all poses grasp- ing after Cormac McCarthy and J.M.


Coetzee. The second story, “The Lover,” offers


usmore of the same: “the same state of nothingness, the drifting from place to place.” Galgut explains that “he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things,most of all the person and place andthingthatheis. . . . Inthisstatetravel isn’t celebrationbut a kindofmourning, a way of dissipating yourself.” But I would argue that he’s in exactly the opposite state: He luxuriates in his self, whipping his lust and ennui into shiny peaksof spunsugar like this: “His loneli- ness resounds in him with a high thin note, like the linger- ing sound of a bell. . . . A thin columnof grief rises inhimlike mercury.” This time he’s in Africa on


IN A STRANGE ROOM Three Journeys By Damon Galgut Europa. 207 pp. Paperback, $15


another of his “aimless and aw- fulwalks,”whenhemeets three Europeantourists. “The young- er man has from up close a beauty that is almost shocking, red lips and high cheek-bones and a long fringe of hair.” Je- rome — with the lips — barely speaks English, which cuts down on the awkward conver- sation, so for some 50 pages Damon and he stare at each other with enough unconsum- mateddesiretomelteverything


but their own bashfulness. “As he settles himself for the night he rolls his eyes up and finds Jerome in exactly the same position, looking back, and for a long arrestedmoment they hold each other’s gaze before they both look away and try to sleep.” I just wanted to grab this sad-sack narrator by the shoulders and shout, “Getajob,man,oraboyfriendora Chiapet or anything!” And to a large extent, he takes that


advice in the third and final story,which is genuinely compelling. In “TheGuard- ian,” our peripatetic narrator iswander- ing through India, but this time he’s


escorting a friend, an actual friend, “somebody he loves andwhomakes him laugh. Somebody he wants to protect”: Anna is amanic-depressivewomanwho requires a complicated regimen of psy- chotropic medications to keep herself from slipping into obsessive behavior and suicidal madness. He’s taking her along with him to give her “a couple of months away from home, a chance for Anna to find herself and stabilize.” Al- most immediately he realizes just how self-destructive she is and how wholly unpreparedhe is to controlher. What followsisaterrifyingexperience


of tornaffections andThirdWorldmedi- cal care (Note: Don’t get sick in India). After so many static pages of vague de- spair, it’s doubly shocking to be hurled through this ordeal as Damon races to save a friendsosetondestroyingherself. Here, finally, we see what Galgut can do — what he did in “The Good Doctor” — when he wrenches himself out of his head, when his story is rooted in the detailsofspecificpeopleenduringactual challenges. Plenty of sophisticated, sensitive


readers have praised these stories, and I don’t doubt their insight or their critical acumen. But how much you enjoy this novelwill depend largely on howmoved you are by oracular pronouncements suchas: “Ajourney is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it’s made. You go fromone place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that youwere ever there.” At this stage ofmy life, this seems like a small roomrather than a strange one, and I’m tired of sharing it with men who have nothing more to tellme than howdispirited they are.


charlesr@washpost.com


Charles is The Post’s fiction critic. For a new episode of the TotallyHip VideoBook review, go towapo.st/totally-hip.


of a control freak and prone to sending hyperbolic e-mails), Lady Luck has ADD, and Gluttony com- petes in deep-fried Twinkie-eating competitions, then belchesonsnooty teenage girls and sentences them to bouts of bulimia. But the central story belongs to Fate, alias Fabio, an overworked, burned-out man- ager of 83 percent of the world’s population. You think Beltway traffic is sucking the life out of you? Try oversee- ing 5.5 billion people, most of whom seem de-


FATED By S.G. Browne New American Library. 352 pp. Paperback, $15


termined to muck up their own happiness (Destiny skims off the Nobel laureates and Super Bowl MVPs, while Fate gets left with us dregs). Fate wants to change jobs, and


there’s precedent for it: Fidelity got canned “in the wake of the free-love debacle . . . and Ego lost his job after the Beatles broke up.” But everything changes when Fate catches a glimpse of a mortal named Sara Griffen—or, more accurately, when she catches a glimpse of him, since he’s sunbathing nude in a new top-of-the-line man- suit. Soon after their affair begins, Fate breaks Jerry’s No. 1 rule — “Don’t get involved” — by trying to keep hapless mortals from commit- ting adultery or gambling away their savings. But tinkering with a few already-determined fates sets off a butterfly-wings-to-tsunami effect: “Without meaning to, I’ve affected several million humans,” Fate realiz- es. “AndI’mwondering if I’mgoing to get away with this.” With Jerry as his boss, does he


really have to wonder? True love’s struggle against all


odds isn’t an original story line, but the fate of “Fated” hinges on the details, which Browne nails comical- ly time and again: Infatuation gazes at his reflection in a lamp’s base while he converses with Fate, and Fate avoids telling Sara about Jerry because “she’d want to meet him, which of course is impossible, and that would just lead to arguments about her feeling like I don’t think she’s good enough to meetGod.” This author’s mind must be as active as a pinball machine surrounded by 10- year-old boys; the pace never falters. Even when Browne seems to stall toward the end, he pulls out some- thing so unexpected and pitch- perfect that it’s obvious Creativity knocked him out of his chair and started typing herself. bookworld@washpost.com


Pekkanen’s comic novel, “The Opposite of Me,” was published in March.


FOR YOUNG READERS SNOOK ALONE


By Marilyn Nelson; illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering Candlewick, $16.99. Ages 5-8


Snook is a rat terrier who lives “in a hermitage on an island in a faraway sea.” It’s a life filled with the sounds of “wind in the sugar canes, me-singing birds . . . and the bee-buzzing of motorbikes.” But no matter how exotic the setting, when a tropical storm separates Snook from his beloved master, he becomes every dog (and every child) lost in a bewildering world. Surrounded by giant crabs and prowling baby sharks, he remains brave and resourceful as he scavenges for food and water even while “every molecule listened for his friend.” Marilyn


Nelson’s poetic text is sweetened by Timothy Basil Ering’s color-saturated paintings set against parchment-textured backgrounds.Water-level views of Snook in the prow of a boat—ears flying, nose pointed at the sky— give way to bleak beaches across which a small, black-and-white figure trudges, nose to the sand. But never fear, the final image is one of such pure bliss, such unmeasured joy, that it requires no words to explain. —Kristi Jemtegaard


LIZARDS By Nic Bishop Scholastic, $17.99. Ages 4–8 Leaping lizards aren’t the half of it. Nic


Bishop’s latest book also presents stunning photos of slithering lizards, sprinting lizards, sand-swimming lizards and some sunbathing lizards that look as blissed-out as any human sun-worshipper. Often magnified two to four times their actual sizes, these survivors of the Age of Dinosaurs are given the respectful scrutiny they deserve. As in his previous homages, “Marsupials” and “Frogs,” Bishop delivers plenty of intriguing facts: The flying dragon lizard from Southeast Asia, for instance,


can glide for 100 feet, steering all the way. The text helps explain the impressive variations in lizard size, appearance and skills on display in Bishop’s extraordinary double-page images, which reveal textures ranging from smooth-as-silk to ancient-looking to positively thorny, with special features like spiny tails, horned heads and, of course, those soulful eyes and astonishing tongues. Bishop also manages to convey the motion of these scampering, scurrying creatures. Multiple-image views reveal a gliding gecko using its feet and skin flaps like a parachute. A foldout page shows a basilisk running nimbly across water. One photo captures the veiled chameleon’s tongue extended almost 12 inches as it reaches for a cricket that’s about to get the licking of a lifetime. —Abby McGanney Nolan


SHIP BREAKER By Paolo Bacigalupi Little, Brown, $17.99. Ages 12 and up


In the post-apocalyptic future of Paolo Bacigalupi’s “Ship Breaker,” the world is sharply divided into “rust rats” and “swanks.” Nailer, a scavenger of beached tankers, is one of the former. His bleak life takes a turn, though, when he discovers a storm-wrecked sailing vessel and rescues the lone survivor: a pretty, extremely wealthy girl.When he flees with Nita to a squalid, largely submerged New Orleans, Nailer enrages his brutal father, who had planned to keep the girl’s promised reward for himself. A finalist for this year’s National Book Award, this gritty, tautly


paced novel will rivet readers eager to learn both the fate of the young ship breaker and the reason for the world’s grim collapse. Memorable characters add pith and spirit, including gutsy Nita and a “half-man” named Tool, who bucks the servitude for which he was genetically engineered.


—Mary Quattlebaum


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